They Called Him Stonewall

by Davis, Burke;

  I approve of all except allowing the enemy to retire; that I cannot approve of … we had them secure, and could have taken them unconditionally.

  While I was at the advanced batteries, a cannon ball came in about five steps of me. I presume you think my name ought to appear in the papers, but when you consider the composition of our army, you will entertain a different view … only those who have independent commands are as a general rule spoken of.…

  You will take particular care that neither this nor any subsequent letter gets into a newspaper.

  The season dragged into April, and as Scott waited for more supplies, Santa Anna climbed into a forbidding position astride the highway to Mexico City, in a mountain gap called Cerro Gordo. Scott’s engineers studied it with concern, for the two armies were now of equal size, and it might be costly to attack the hill fortress. The Americans advanced slowly through a country of broad forests. For a few days young Jackson had an opportunity to look at the country.

  He found it “mostly a barren waste, cities excepted,” with “but two seasons, wet and dry.” For a time he lived in a Mexican house which charmed him: “With a large back lot, which contained a beautiful orange orchard. Also in this lot was a fine bathing establishment, the pool being about 25 by 30 feet.”

  Wandering, he found a church, “the most highly ornamented in the interior of any edifice” he had ever seen. He was

  … struck by the gaudy appearance on every side, but most especially the opposite end from the entrance, which appears to be gilded. At the base is a magnificent silver altar, and on each side are statues to attract the astonished beholder. The music is of the highest character. The priests are robed in the most gorgeous apparel. The inhabitants take off their hats on approaching the church and do not replace them until they have passed it. One day while I was near the building I observed a senora (lady) gradually approaching the door. Upon another occasion I saw a female looking at a statue and weeping like a child.

  The words revealed a Jackson more than fascinated by his first glimpse of the Catholic Church. His letters to Laura hinted that he was smitten with the primitive life of Mexico, which drew him strangely, though it must have seemed irrevocably sinful and heathen to young Tom.

  On April seventeenth, rescued from what threatened to become an exotic interlude, he joined the army in the attack at Cerro Gordo. Here he had his first lesson in flank assault. His instructor was one of Scott’s engineers, Captain Robert E. Lee. For Lee uncovered the unsuspected weakness of the Mexican line and proposed a blow across the face of precipitous rocks. Scott launched his attack. Twice the Mexicans drove back the Americans in the front, but at the climax, when every gun blazed from the beetling hill, Scott’s cannon came up over Lee’s rough road, crushed the western flank, rolled the Mexicans back and routed them. More than twelve hundred Mexicans fell, and Santa Anna lost all his guns, as well as three thousand prisoners. Once more, however, Scott loosed his prisoners and plodded on in the path of the enemy. Jackson’s K Company was not engaged in the attack, but was held in reserve. The company came into action as Santa Anna fled through the mountains, and the light guns sped the retreat.

  It was not enough for Jackson “to give them a few shots from the battery”; he was again critical of Scott’s methods in a private letter: “They succeeded in effecting their escape for want of our dragoons.”

  Jackson wrote that his commander, Captain Taylor, “has spoken of me very flatteringly in his report to General Twiggs.” But as the army pushed on toward Mexico City, Jackson was left behind. He wrote ruefully to Laura:

  I have the mortification of being left.… Notwithstanding my present situation I have some hope of getting forward by and by.… But all this is with General Scott.

  I throw myself into the hands of an all-wise God, and hope that it may yet be for the better. It may have been one of His means of diminishing my excessive ambition.…

  Laura may have been puzzled at the expression of a fatalism new to Tom’s character, and even more by the air of marked humility. This first fulsome religious expression followed his casual acquaintance with the Catholic Church. His mention of God, characteristically linked with a confession of his ambitions, seemed to set a pattern for young Tom in which God, war and ambition were inextricably mingled. He was to add other elements.

  He wrote Laura further. “I am in fine quarters and making rapid progress in the Spanish language, and have an idea of making some lady acquaintances shortly.”

  Now he literally called himself to duty. A vacancy in a light artillery battery under Captain John Magruder lured him. Magruder was shunned by other young officers, for he had a reputation as a hard taskmaster, was hot-tempered, and always sought the hottest of fighting. Handsome John would be satisfied with nothing less than perfection in his subordinates. Jackson applied for the post.

  “I wanted to see active service,” he said. “To be near the enemy … and when I heard that John Magruder had got his battery, I bent all my energies to be with him; for I knew that if any fighting was to be done Magruder would be on hand.”

  Jackson chased Magruder across wild country, from his garrison post at Jalapa to Puebla. At last, when Scott thought himself ready for the field again—in August—the army pushed forward. The offensive interrupted at least one army feud. Magruder issued a challenge to a duel to General Franklin Pierce, who was so soon to become President. It was Jackson who carried the challenge for his superior officer.

  The big push also overrode other interruptions, one of them vividly described by Dick Ewell’s brother, Tom, who was to die in battle in this strange country:

  “The water here, unless well qualified with brandy, has a very peculiar effect on one—it opens the bowels like a melting tat. General Scott came to see us the other day. He complimented Major Sumner very warmly on our improvements, and especially on the extraordinary vigilance of our scouts who, as he said, were peering at him from behind every bush as he approached the camp. To those aware of the disease prevalent here, the mistake of the General is extremely ludicrous. When we go to drill, the men have to leave ranks by the dozens, and as the plain is bare as a table, they make an exposé of the whole affair. The effect is unique as they squat in rows about a hundred yards from the battalion, and when we deploy as skirmishers we run right over them.”

  Dysentery and other ailments filled Scott’s crude hospitals, and as he strove to throw forward every possible man, he lost entire regiments. Volunteers whose enlistments expired trudged off home. In the face of all handicaps, the army entered the valley of Mexico City on August tenth, and, while still charmed with the view of one of the earth’s loveliest cities, was driven to the attack.

  Once more Scott found Santa Anna in an almost impregnable position. He had dug in at a place known as San Antonio, which he had covered with guns and laced with trenches. One flank was guarded by an impassable bog; the other, almost as forbidding to the eye, was called the Pedregal, a waste of volcanic stones, cruelly sharp, piled in endless heaps and defiles.

  Dick Ewell was writing home about this time, and he was a more imaginative correspondent than Jackson: “I really think one of the most talented men connected with this army is Captain Lee of the Engineers (that was Robert E.). By his daring reconnaissances pushed up to the cannon’s mouth, he has enabled General Scott to fight his battles almost without leaving his tent.”

  It was now Lee who gave the army and Jackson a second lesson in flank attack. Lee pierced the awesome Pedregal. His hand struck the Mexicans from their fine position and drove them to the walls of their capital. In the doing, however, there was grim work for American troops, including Jackson and Ewell, the commander and lieutenant of the future.

  Captain Lee found a mule path over the Pedregal and work parties widened it into a road. The army streamed over the gigantic rock pile. After crossing the Pedregal, the Americans faced a ridge held by General Valencia and his troops, whose twenty-two guns outranged those of Magruder. Of this, Ewell w
rote home:

  We went out with General Scott and staff, who stood on a hill overlooking the scene.… Valencia from his works kept up an incessant fire of heavy artillery … now and then blazing away with his six thousand muskets as though our troops were within fifty yards (Mexican fashion).… The Mexicans were so surprised at not being at once driven off that they thought a great victory had been gained. They commenced a jubilee that night, among other things their bands would strike up, “Hail Columbia,” play about half through it and stop.

  Valencia brevetted some of his officers and was crazy with joy. Santa Anna knew something more of the Yankees and ordered Valencia that night, by an aide, to strike his pieces and retire. “Pshaw, pshaw,” said the latter, “Tell Santa Anna to go to hell. I have saved the Republic.”

  Jackson fought through these hours with no other evident thought than to serve his battery, to attract attention of his superiors, and survive. If he noted the Mexican music, he made no mention of it. Jackson was part of an army unit which was pinned into an angle of the Pedregal by superior Mexican shell-fire.

  The isolated American segment seemed in distress as darkness fell, for huge columns of marching Mexicans had approached during the last hours of day. The bulk of Scott’s force was five miles away, over the Pedregal. After dark, rain fell in torrents and all but drowned the voices of officers in a desperate conference of war at a church in the village of Contreras. The council came to the reckless decision that the enemy should be flanked once more, by holding twelve thousand men with a handful of regular troops, while the storming party circled the position. Captain Lee was sent to advise General Scott. Lee went alone on horseback, without even a guide, through a rainstorm breaking over the Pedregal, which was now infested with bands of Mexican irregulars. He somehow went through, and Scott branded his ride, “the greatest feat of physical and moral courage” of the campaign.

  Lee and other engineers led a storming party through the dark to the Mexican flank, and at daybreak the American attack again broke Santa Anna’s army. A pell-mell retreat packed the road into the city, and there was slaughter at the gates. Santa Anna lost another 3,000 as prisoners, and 3,250 in dead and wounded.

  The action brought Jackson a citation for gallantry from Magruder:

  My fire was opened and continued with great rapidity for about an hour. In a few moments Lieutenant Jackson, commanding the second section of the battery, advanced in handsome style, and kept up the fire with great briskness and effect.… Lieutenant Jackson’s conduct was equally conspicuous throughout the whole day, and I cannot too highly commend him to the major-general’s favorable consideration.

  High praise indeed—and this report was sent to an adjutant whom Jackson would meet again one day: Captain Joseph Hooker.

  After a lull, in which Scott sought an armistice and Santa Anna, delaying, called up reinforcements, the fighting was resumed. On September fifth, a savage assault carried an outpost of the city, Molino del Rey. Scott then threw his columns at Chapultepec, the citadel of Mexico. The troops hurried in over narrow, gun-swept causeways. Here the climactic scene of the war unfolded. It seemed almost as if it had been staged to display Jackson’s talents.

  The lieutenant took his guns behind the Fourteenth Infantry Regiment, up the hill under fire. Jackson challenged a big gun in a breastwork above him and drew the concentrated fire of a whole section of the Mexican line. The guns had obviously been trained on the causeway in advance. The barrage killed Jackson’s horses and dropped fifteen of his men. At the last there was only Jackson and a sergeant. But with the lieutenant handling the sponge-staff and the sergeant firing, the single surviving gun answered the enemy.

  Gunners ran past Jackson toward the rear, and many infantrymen joined the retreat. Jackson tried in vain to halt them. He strutted in the open, shouting, “This is nothing, men! Come on. They can’t hurt me. You can stand it!” The men fled on to the rear.

  A messenger came up. Jackson was to pull off his gun, if possible, and come to the rear. Jackson refused to obey the order. Magruder appeared and Jackson turned on him in blazing anger. Give him fifty men, he shouted, and he could hold the position. He argued that it was more dangerous to withdraw, as General Worth had ordered, than to push ahead. Magruder agreed.

  A fresh brigade came and Jackson swung a second gun into position. The combined fire began to tell and the charging brigade found an opening in the entrenchments above. One breastwork fell, and then another, and advancing parties chased Mexicans upward with ladders, from post to post, until the citadel was taken. This unprecedented battle spectacle did not end it, for the majority of the Mexican forces had fled and were now caught in the slow eddies of thronging humanity in the streets and causeways of Mexico City. Dashing American artillery pieces found good hunting in the packed masses. Jackson ranged well out in front.

  The lieutenant had hitched his guns to wagon limbers and run into the center of the city, blasting the retreating peons. Magruder followed closely, with ammunition in his flying caissons. The two argued: Magruder, the army’s noted daredevil, seeking to prevent Jackson from pushing too far in advance of the army, lest he be cut off. This singular discussion was overheard by two young officers, both South Carolinians: D. H. Hill, already known to Jackson; and Barnard E. Bee. The Jackson-Magruder incident was one of the final actions of the war.

  The praise which official reports heaped upon him must have contented even Jackson. His name appeared twice in Scott’s report. General Worth wrote: “… The gallant Lieutenant Jackson, who, although he had lost most of his horses and many of his men, continued chivalrously at his post, combating with noble courage.” General Pillow wrote: “… His brave lieutenant, Jackson, in the face of a galling fire from the enemy’s entrenched positions, did valuable service …”

  Magruder gave his lieutenant full credit: “I beg leave to call the attention of the major-general commanding to the conduct of Lieutenant Jackson of the First Artillery. If devotion, industry, talent and gallantry are the highest qualities of a soldier, then he is entitled to the distinction which their profession confers.”

  That was enough for the commander. Jackson got his rank as a major for gallantry at Chapultepec. There was scarcely a hint of modesty in Jackson’s reaction, when friends crowded about with congratulations.

  Did he feel no trepidation, they asked, when other men were falling all around him?

  Not at all. His only fear, Jackson earnestly confessed, was that he would not be able to get into enough of the dangerous action to draw the attention of superior officers, so that he might not be able to make his conduct under fire as notable as he would like!

  He gave no further sign that he was pleased with himself, but he appeared as a remarkably single-minded young man who, having won renown on the field, was disposed to accept honors with gravity. He had passed his test as a good soldier, but there was in him none of the detachment with which Ewell, for example, looked upon the war. To Ewell the affair with the Mexicans, bloody though it was, had about it the air of comic opera. Jackson saw only the beckoning of glory.

  Jackson did not stop even with complaining of the lack of opportunity under fire. He expounded the beauties of battle to his friends. It was always exalting to him, he said. Something happened to him in the gun smoke. He could not express it with precision, but: “I seem to have a more perfect command of my faculties, in the midst of fighting.”

  Jackson remained in Mexico until the following spring, furthering his education in assorted matters. He had fought his last battle of youth. Fourteen years of peace lay ahead of him.

  Mexico had not only whetted his appetite for glory. There were stern lessons in supply and strategy and the pinch of privation, and in the very essence of victory in battle—mobility. He also broadened his acquaintance with the military aristocracy of the nation, such as it was to be in the coming years of neglect. In addition to Lee and the distinguished young men of Scott’s staff, there were future Confederate generals on every hand
: Ewell and Jubal Early, A. P. Hill and D. H. Hill, Joseph E. Johnston, Huger. There were also embryo Federal commanders: Grant, Hooker, McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Shields.

  There were no letters about such companions. Instead, Jackson learned to dance, and became acquainted with some Mexican women. There are faint hues of a colorful season in letters to Laura:

  As I believe that this country is destined to be reformed by ours, I think that probably I shall spend many years here and may possibly conclude (though I have not yet) to make my life more natural by sharing it with some amiable Senorita.…

  And:

  Do not allow my words about marrying in Mexico to disturb you. I have sometimes thought of staying here, and again of going home. I have no tie in this country equal to you.… My pay while with Captain Magruder was one hundred and four dollars per month, and I expect it will soon be the same here; but at present it is only about ninety; yet I have plenty of money.… I dress as a gentleman should who wishes to be received as such. I do not gamble, nor spend my money, as I think, foolishly.…

  And:

  The morning hours I occupy in studies and business, and generally taking a walk after dinner, and sometimes a ride on the Paseo or elsewhere in the evening.

  The Paseo is a wide road on the southwest of the city and about half a mile in length, with a beautiful fountain in the centre, and is a place of fashionable resort. Families of wealth appear there in their carriages at sunset, partly if not entirely for show.… I purpose on riding … this evening hoping to see something there more attractive than at home.

  When not on duty I generally pay a visit after supper or tea. Among those families which I visit are some of the first in the republic, as Don Lucas Alleman, Martinez del Rio.…

  The book I am now studying is Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son translated into Spanish; so that whilst I am obtaining his thoughts, I am also acquiring a knowledge of the Spanish tongue.… Subsequent to this I shall study Shakespeare’s works, which I purchased a few days since.…